This invention generally relates to determining the order in which to execute tasks in a computer system, and more specifically, to using a graphical user interface to determine that order.
Desktop graphical user interfaces (GUI) in most common workstation operating systems provide views of folder content in several different formats, including the placement of large icons representing objects contained in the folder. For example, one system folder used in the Windows Operating System contains applications to be initiated or executable tasks to be processed during workstation bootup operations. These applications and tasks are typically initiated in an unspecified sequence, executing in parallel until all are completed. Because certain applications have prerequisite background services which must be started up before the applications can initiate, these applications requiring the background services cannot be included in the default Startup folder, and must be manually initiated after the required background services are available.
For example, a user of a computer workstation might wish to have an email client and an instant messaging client automatically initiated when the workstation is started up. These applications will fail to initiate unless a connection has been previously made to access the Internet, and that connection client may also fail if particular network services have not yet been established. Thus, a simple method is needed to designate particular sequential and parallel processing of all executable tasks contained within a graphical user interface.
Known solutions include an automatic parallel-only execution of programs included in the system startup folder with no way to designate conditional or sequential execution of tasks. Full-featured workflow management software exists, such as i2 Corporation's Informatica tool, but these require extremely complicated setup configurations, including identifying a specific fixed logical link between parent and child tasks. No solution currently exists in which the execution sequence of tasks within a folder can be identified more simply and efficiently by the geometric location of the icons in the GUI representation.